International adoption: Romania and Bulgaria, two countries in comparison

Back <<

Date: 03/12/09

International adoption: Romania and Bulgaria, two countries in comparison

" Bulgaria has shown that it is possible to fight the market for children without close international adoptions , "said Krassimira Natan, Lawyer and representative staff Ai.Bi. in Bulgaria, speaking at the Conference "Challenges in adoption procedures in Europe" held Tuesday, December 1 at the Palais de l'Europe in Strasbourg.

The Bulgaria is a country that, unlike Romania, has chosen to promote adoption of a policy geared to transparency and rigor, thus avoiding the extreme decision to block international adoptions. After a period of gradual slowdown, the government in Sofia has decided, at the end of 2007, to give a new impetus to international adoptions. He did so from a change of the members of the Central for adoptions and intensifying the number of sessions of the body, introducing new criteria for the combination of adoptable children with prospective adoptive families, creating an ad hoc regulation for children with "special needs" (ie, belonging to ethnic minority health problems or over the age of seven years).

The results came back in 2008, the Ministry of Justice has provided an opportunity for 18 children 4 to be greeted by a family of intercountry adoption (in 2007 were less than half: 81 children), in the first ten months of 2009 were well 189 children who have found a family with international adoption.

Crucial to this new trend of international adoptions the role played by the Bulgarian press and the public that, aware of the dramatic reality of his own childhood, he responded by asking the government to put in place policies to give a family to thousands of abandoned children . Location really farsighted to a country that has been so fully that you have absorbed the European esprit.

However, it remains concerned at the situation in Romania . Unlike Sofia, civil society and the Romanian institutions were closed behind the facade of national pride, delaying the moratorium on international adoptions in place since 2001. To pay the expenses are more than 80 thousand children living in institutions or in a state of temporary accommodation.

Yet in Romania there are politicians in profile as the number one European Office for adoptions Bogdan Panait, who in Strasbourg is compared with intelligence and great listening skills with colleagues and contacts in Europe. Not to be forgotten is the proposed Panait, submitted to the Government last October, to reopen international adoptions. These politicians should be supported and helped in their attempts to take the side of children.

.